Real men don’t write hackey articles*

There comes a time in every country’s existence when a lot of it’s low grade writers try to rehash the whole “where have all the real men” gone meme. This meme has travelled far and wide, has clocked a lot of frequent flier miles visiting almost every country, and has been groped at airports around the world (except Afghanistan of course, because in that country even real men get killed), and has now finally arrived in India.

The first to get it off ground is none other than India’s #1 non-TOI newspaper, the venerable Hindustan Times.

In this season of celebrating 'manhood' — November 19 has been the International Man's Day for some years now — I wondered why no sociologist is discussing the greatest danger that today's men face: the virtual obliteration of their gender identity.

It’s a good start. The writer establishes from the get-go that this article is going to dedicated to nostalgia about a simpler time when men were allowed to be men, and not these strange mutant creatures they are today, having been brainwashed by the feminist movement and self-help books.

While I watch younger generation of women going for breast implants and thongs, their "laddish" enthusiasm for pornography and striptease, I find increasing numbers of men dyeing or highlighting their hair, getting an earring or getting rid of excess body hair, or simply dressing in typical girly colours — hot pinks, fluorescent greens, purples, yellows and vermilions — sometimes to look like wimps. Frankly, this breed of the effete and narcissistic dandies obsessed with softening everything about themselves tickles me no end.

Exactly. Breast implants are manly! Women want to be “laddish” (whatever that means) and watch pornography, which is strange because the only reason God gave women vaginas was to enable them to provide pleasure to men and not derive any of it for themselves. What’s next? These double-breasted porn watching creatures asking to talk on the phone, or daring to choose their own career or *GASP* deciding not to have children? BLASPHEMY! SACRILEGIOUS! This is a slippery slope!

Anyway, what is up with men getting their hair coloured these days? Didn’t these daisies get the memo? Gender is a very delicate thing. The minute you get your hair coloured, your balls will recede and no one will be able to make out that under all that small amount of streaked hair, lies a masculine lump of a man. In fact, everyone will be so confused that older gentlemen will get up when you enter a room and hold a door open for you while younger men will grope you the minute you cross that door and enter a bus. And if you get your body hair waxed, you will turn into a sappy wimp as various kinds of emotions will start oozing from your skin’s pores. That’s why God gave you body hair, to keep your emotions where they belong. .

Machismo seems to be out of fashion these days. In fact, the idea of the alpha male who is the leader of the pack, eats first, gets his pick of the females (a typical example of which was Frank Sinatra, who headed a bunch of sycophantic drunks rightly known as the Rat Pack, who knocked around his wife Mia Farrow), considered as real tough guy behaviour, is now passé.

Oh, machismo. We miss you so much. Why, when you were in fashion, “seducing” a woman was considered a sport and men employed all kinds of tactics to get some putang pie. So much has changed since then.

Why just reminiscence about the sixties and seventies? Why not go back to the stone age? That was a glorious time to be a man. At that time, men were gruffy, hairy emotionless neanderthals who had the fashion sense of Tarzaan and the wit and charm of the great Khali, and they ate anything they wanted to without even cooking it or washing it in boiled water (or as we call it in India “Chinese food”). Meanwhile, the women stayed home in the cave combing their armpit hair while watching a young Larry King on their slate shaped teevee and sending tweets to each other through large parrots. Wasn’t it such an awesome time?

These sort of articles boil down to the same basic argument: WHY ARE HUMANS EVOLVING?

We must strive to preserve gender roles forever, because it makes it easier to determine whom to discriminate against! 

Now, since this writer made some assumptions and generalisations about other people, I’m going to do the same thing and make assumptions about him.

Dear Hackey HT writer,

Did you have a terrible childhood? Was your father mean and distant? Did he never show you any emotion? Did he always ask your mother to shut her trap hole whenever she was trying to make a point? When you were five and you fell down while playing and bruised yourself and you ran back home crying only to be punished more for “acting like a girl”? Did your father get all his parenting advice from hindi movies?  Are you still waiting for his approval because he wanted you to do something manly like cleaning shark teeth or making hip-hop videos with half-naked ladies and instead you ended up in an effete and pansy career like writing?

Seriously, all you do is sit down and hit the buttons on your typewriter.

How manly is that?

 

A requiem for the alpha male [HT]

(*Except on this blog. Almost everything written here is quite hackey, to say the least)

How Twitter changed my life!

On a fateful night two years ago I have absolutely no recollection of, I joined the “microblogging” site popularly referred to as Twitter. Little did I know that when I filled in that form with my details and clicked on “Create my Account”, my life would be changed forever.

Before I joined twitter, I was just like you. I foolishly thought that I had my life all figured out, thanks to the secret of life revealed to me in the book, The Secret. If all I had to do to make things happen was to WISH for them, I could do that all day long. So I quit my job and spent my days wishing for things. When after a few months nothing happened, I began to question my worldview. One particularly tough night, after spending hours wishing for a measly glass of Rum & Coke, I realized that the Universe wasn’t really listening to me. It was probably spending it’s time paying attention to some malnutritioned African kid and serving him MY rum & Coke. It dawned on me that the universe was a socialist with a bleeding heart and an NPR tote bag!

So it was up to me to look after myself. I bought a bootleg copy of The Fountainhead (free markets FTW!), and spent the next month reading it (have you seen the size of that damn book?).One day, the ghost of Ayn Rand appeared in my dreams and asked me to sign up for twitter. The ghost also asked me to lend it some money, because apparently, the shops in hell are a little expensive, being monopolistic enterprises and all. I realized that Ayn was testing me and refused to lend her ghost any money. In fact, I told Ayn’s ghost the same thing Ayn would tell a bearded 90 year old man who just lost his life savings in the stock market, “Get a job, whiskers!”.

Now, unbeknownst to me, Twitter was a treasure trove of wordly knowledge. It had the wisdom of Socrates, the catchiness of Confucius, the gimmickry of Yoda and the cultural relevance of Lady Gaga. So when my life changed for the better, I thought I had to share the secret with the rest of the world, as all enlightened beings are supposed to.

Here’s a gist of all the knowledge I was able to amass:

1. The art of listening: The first thing that surprised me about twitter was that in order for people to pretend to care about what I have to say, I had to accord them the same courtesy. Being a blowhard IRL (i.e. In Real Life for all you n00bs out there!), this was hard for me to understand at first. Did other people expect me to listen to them? Why would I listen to anyone when I already know what they want to say, based on how they look? Is this what being social was all about? I know that now, because of twitter. Another thing I learnt was that all I have to do to make people feel “special” is to feign interest in what they’re saying! Who’da thunk it?

2. The art of letting go: On twitter, once you write a tweet, you need to let it go.Though, be warned, It’s not that easy. In the beginning, when you see the vowels from your tweets being plucked out as harshly as a catholic priest plucks the virginity of a choir boy, all you would want to do is physically punch the culprit. You tire of the constant need to bang your head against the wall when you see someone appending a word to your tweet and totally changing it’s context. You also learn to not care about the dozens of people who will simply copy your tweets and tweet them as their own. Once you put something out there, it isn’t yours anymore. So let it go. Set it in the wild. And, if it loves you as much as you love it, it will come back to you in the form of a text message.

3. The art of sounding exotic: Thanks to twitter, I was able to learn how I can get people from other countries to pay attention to mundane events in my life like waking up or raindrops. All you have to do is romanticize everything, sprinkle a bit of melancholy, and voila before you can say “Jai Ho”, you have thousands of followers! For example, my room isn’t filthy, it’s “proof that I live a full life because each millimetre of dust contains millions of memories!” (Sadly, that doesn’t work on my Mom!). Similarly, politicians aren’t just corrupt, they “feed off the carcasses of hungry children, remaining oblivious to their plight, all the while trying to fill their insatiable greed and rotund bellies”. 

4. What women want: Earlier, all my knowledge about woman was gathered from the Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want. However, since recent events have revealed that Mel Gibson clearly has no idea about women (at least not the type of women I would like to attract), I had to turn to a new source of wisdom. And I found him on twitter. My new personal love guru, Chetan Bhagat, has made me see the light with his constant tips & tricks on how to impress women. It has not worked until now, and I have ten restraining orders against me. However, I’m pretty sure I’ll find the one one of these days. If the woman on twitter are any indication, I am almost certain that woman in general think more about sex than men. That’s because statistically,  if you’re a woman and you’re on twitter, you probably spend most of your time spewing more innuendo than an 80s British sitcom. Although, my guru tells me that the women on twitter aren’t the ones you take home to your parents. I wonder what he means by that?

5. How to support a cause: Before twitter, I was always in a flux whenever I wanted to do something for the world at large. You know, give back to the world and all that jazz. Now, whenever I hear about a cause that I think I can support, I always add a ribbon to my twitter profile picture (or as the cool kids call them, a twibbon!). Joining a facebook group is so 2007! In fact, thanks to twitter, I got Barack Obama elected as President, brought real democracy to Iran and helped cure breast cancer. That pretty much concludes my quota of “good deeds” for the rest of the decade. Santa better bring me loads of stuff this christmas!

6. Feeding your insanity: Whatever mental illness you suffer from, twitter can act as an enabler. If you are a masochist, you can follow “celebrities” on twitter and their banality will help mangle all your senses. This is even more painful than lying on a bed of nails. If you suffer from low self esteem, you can follow people who have poor language skills and a really delusional sense of self, which helps you feel a little bit saner about yourself. However, don’t feel that sane, you’re on twitter after all. I mean that as a good thing. In this Jersey Shore-ified world, being insane is a one-way ticket to popularity. Remember, all the insane people have the most followers.

7. Creating lazy content – Not only do the people on twitter like reading whatever’s on twitter. they are also really eager to read other people’s analysis about twitter. Even though almost every post/article on twitter says the same thing, people still like to read them and then retweet them, because this way they can pretend to laugh at themselves. Another reason why twitter posts are popular is because a post on twitter is the easiest thing to write. Start the post by making fun of a public figure you revile, throw in a few references to people tweeting about the food they eat, add some banal celebrities and rephrase what everyone else has said before along with some jokes. End the whole thing by adding a few meta references (because it’s important for the world to know that you can laugh at yourself too!) and your twitter post is ready.

Jairam Ramesh takes a brave stand against fictional wizards!

Jairam Ramesh, the UPA’s most forthright comedian and India’s #1 collector of wigs designed by Susan Boyle , has finally come out against a crazy, cultish breed of human beings who believe in boy wizards and magic wands!

No, I’m not talking about the RSS, silly!

It’s fans of Harry Potter!

India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who suggested Harry Potter may be at least partly responsible for the decline of the country's owl population. "Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls," he reportedly said.

Finally, someone brave enough to stand up to those irritating and demanding human beings commonly referred to as “kids”.Toupee Gandhi will not stand by while all those helpless parents, terrorized by fear, yield to the demands of their powerful and cruel children.

Jairam always knew this would happen. How, you ask? Well, Jairam always knows. It’s among his many gifts. He’s psychic like that! They don’t call him Captain Haircut for nothing!

The report by the wildlife group Traffic, also cited the dark arts of magic as being responsible for the owls' decline but did not blame Harry Potter, instead suggesting that a number of owls were being killed, trapped and traded for traditional rituals."While the exact number of owls traded each year in the countrywide is unknown, it certainly runs into thousands... There are anecdotal reports of owls becoming rare throughout India due to loss of suitable habitat, especially old-growth forests," it said.

Ha! Screw you, “Traffic”! What do you know? You’re just a bunch of people doing comprehensive research on a particular subject. You don’t know what Jairam Ramesh knows. Not only does Jairam Ramesh think outside the box, he’s so far away from the box that the box appears as a dot to him. After all, he is, what Malcom Gladwell calls, an outlier.

"Shaman or black magic practitioners, prescribe the use of owls and their body parts such as skull, feathers, ear tufts, claws, heart, liver, kidney, blood, eyes, fat, beak, tears, eggshells, meat and bones for ceremonial rituals." The report, which is supported by WWF India and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, says that half of India's 30 species of owl can be found on sale in markets.

You better stop teaching black magic to little kids, Harry. Or Jairam Ramesh will take all the owls in the world and hide them in his hair. Why? Because he can.

 

The Hedwig effect: Harry Potter blamed for endangering owls [The Independent]

(via IyerDeepak)

BREAKING: Arundhati Roy arrested by fashion police!

After appearing at a public event a couple of days ago, noted writer and regular user of Dabur Amla Hair Oil, Arundhati Roy, was arrested in the evening today for crimes against fashion. She has been taken into stylist custody. Tomorrow morning, she will appear before a panel headed by Justice Tim Gunn which will decide on further action to be taken. Her sentence might include watching the movie The Devil Wears Prada everyday for the next year and a free lifetime subscription to Vogue magazine.

An insider who refused to publically give his name as he wasn’t appropriately dressed said that Ms. Roy has been repeatedly warned against committing such heinous offences like wearing a cocktail dress to a morning event and buying off the rack.

Noted designer Manish Malhotra termed her outfit at the public event as a ”seditious felony against couture”. “She acts as if the rules of fashion do not apply to her”, he continued.

Sources in the ministry of fashion told us that in a report submitted by LIFW agents assigned to spy on her it was revealed that she gets her hair done from the same barber as Jairam Ramesh.

Sagarika Ghose, CNN-IBN journalist and the second person ever to be given the title Nightingale of India, wondered on twitter “Why has Arundhati not yet understood that Jimmy Choo is an integral part of the modern Indian woman’s wardrobe?”

The death of romance on Indian television

 

The other day I was aimlessly teevee surfing, trying to watch something watchable on Indian teevee (yeah. my bad!), which I tend to do from time to time, being the eternal optimist I am. I didn't succeed in that, as usual, but I did realize something which gave me the sads.

A sort of epiphany, if I may say so.

They finally killed romance at it's last remaining place of residence.

Television.

During the early 90's, when everyone was still innocent (because the internet was not that widespread and the only way to learn about sex was to read one of the 200 printed copies of  a Shobha De book) and the only supercouple on teevee was Ram & Sita (they were like Bella & Edward from Twilight, except with less brooding and no sex), the leading protagonist from the epic Ramayana (it was just like Avatar, except instead of an American company, the good guys were fighting a really smart evil king. And the leader of the good guys was an actual real life AVATAR! In fact, he was probably the first Avatar ever!!).

So this ancient supercouple were the ideal representation of love on the small screen.  However, their love took an ugly turn (which was very Alec Baldwin/Kim Bassinger-esque) and Sita ended up visiting her aunt in the earth's core, forever. (That's how the used to break up in ancient times. None of the modern 'I hope we can be friends' crap. Once you were done, boy, were you fucking done!).

Apparently, melodrama was all the rage back then!

The next supercouple which caught the nation's eye was from a cartoon show. Even though the show was for little children, it caught the adults fancy. That was because it contained the cutest couple on Indian television ever, Bagheera & Baloo.

Yes, that's right.

Though they weren't a conventional couple, and their love was the love that dare not speak it's name, (homophobia was all the rage back then) those of us in the know nodded our head and played along.

On Sunday morning, whenever that really irritating song came on, the whole family sat together and saw Bagheera and Baloo bring up their adopted retarded human child, whose name was Mowgli. In fact, if it wasn’t for them, Mowgli would have grown up to be an animal!

They bickered, fought over all the little things like household expenditures and in-laws, however, just like every other teevee couple, they made up.

Awww, love, thy name is Bagheera & Baloo!

Then, in the aughts, came the supercouple to beat all the other supercouples.

The greatest one of them all.

Mihir and Tulsi.

Indian teevee’s Bragelina!

They had 1,000,0000,00000,0000000,0000000,000000 kids, of both the legitimate and the illegitimate variety, magically born without them ever “bumping uglies”. They stayed together through so many ups and downs, aided in their adventures by one lonely woman who was probably as old as the earth itself.

Both Mihir & Tulsi loved each other so much that they came back from the dead, a couple of times, just to be with each other again. In fact, both of them voluntarily kept changing their appearance so as to keep the romance alive!. Say what you will about them but, boy, that's called commitment.

Now, even thought those two are not on teevee anymore, sometimes, when the night sky is clear, one can see them floating in space, along with their favourite old woman, because their saga is endless, just like a Manmohan Singh speech .

That was the past.

And this is the present.

'I just want to grab once' is the new 'Honey, your eyes are so beautiful'

Just like everything else, the most unreal thing on the teevee, "Reality Television", has ruined romance!

All everyone wants to do in these shows is fuck each other & get famous! Nobody wants to do the hard work of developing an actual talent. Even if they want to sleep their way to the top, they should do it discreetly, like in they used to do in olden times!

I don't know about you, but I'd rather believe that some woman lived for a thousand years rather than some misogynist who looks like Himesh Reyshamia and Shakti Kapoor had a love-child will get two, intelligent woman to get "intimate" with him. Although, girlfriend, if you end up with that guy, you’re really not that intelligent!

There was a time when people actually cared for the pretention of romance. In fact, some families were so modern that they let both their children speak to each other before they arranged their marriage!

And from that we went to this?

What has the world come to? A person can't even cheat on his significant other. Isn't that what they are there for? Why can't they find out about each other’s ventures outside their relationship in twenty years, when the illegitimate child comes to take his share of the money, like other normal people?

This began when all of us started watching Ally McBeal and took relationship advise from the cast of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.! 

We took something so beautiful like forcibly living together with each other even though the love died long ago and all you’re doing now is keeping up appearances and we turned it into something so ugly! 

This is going to be our generation’s teevee legacy. A bunch of illiterate people shouting the f-word at each other, completely out of context.

We helped kill something which gave hope to millions of suppressed kids that maybe one day they might actually have a chance to be happy before they grew up and their cynicism took over.

For that, we need to hang our heads in shame.

Just like the old guy wearing a wig young woman in the scene below.

Huffington Post SLAMS brown people*

The Internet’s favourite do-rag, the Huffington Post, where the real housewives of Jim Carrey go to “educate” people on the dangers of getting their children vaccinated and actual writers are forced to sit in a slave shop under Arianna Huffington’s desk and write for free, encourages people to racially profile their fellow passengers while boarding a plane.

In an article published a couple of days ago, written by the wife of David “Axis of Evil” Frum, Danielle Crittenden. goes all Mike Huckabee and masks her ignorant bigotry as with “concern for her children”. Not surprising, because these days even David spends his time trying to unsuccessfully pass of as a reasonable person! 

In January and February, 2004, there was a flurry of terrorist threats against international flights between London and Paris and Washington; some flights were canceled; aircraft were grounded and searched; in one instance, F-16 fighter jets escorted a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Dulles.

In March, my husband and I took our three children on a holiday in Europe: our return flight, aboard Air France, connected through Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. We had a three-hour layover before we could board our homebound jet to Washington-Dulles. After clearing international security and poking around the terminal for a bit, the five of us settled into benches in the empty departure lounge -- empty, that was, except for two suspicious-looking men in a bench opposite ours.

Let’s see what those suspicious men looked like:

I say suspicious because they matched almost every profile of a terrorist I'd ever read: Both looked to be about 25 or 26, of Arab descent, beards, dressed in the modern Atta traveling fashion of jeans and t-shirts. Neither had any carry-on bags for an eight-hour flight. One of the men was reading an Arabic newspaper while the other seemed twitchy -- he kept looking around, and repeatedly kept pulling out his documents from a small bag to check them over again.

So, apparently, dressing in jeans and t-shirts is now part of the terrorist garb. Why couldn't those Muslims be conspicuous and wear “Death to America” t-shirts, instead of dressing like normal, harmless white people?. Also, how dare they pretend to act like every other bored airline passenger and keep checking their documents? So what if a middle-aged white woman kept staring at them like they were terrorists? They should have simply sat there silently, and not act twitchy and roam around the lounge making fragile people shit their pants!

Gradually more passengers began filtering into the lounge as the flight departure grew closer. Then, promptly at three o'clock, the two men went over to a large window, fell to their knees and began elaborately praying to Mecca.

"That's it," I told him. "I'm not getting on this plane."

Elementary, my dear Watson! That’s a sure-fire tell-tale sign. Not only were those two wearing the latest terrorist chic, they were praying TO Mecca, instead of in the direction of Mecca, just like the Catholics pray TO the Vatican and the Jews pray TO Jerusalem!

But, hey, maybe talking to security can allay her fears?

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t!

There was a very French-looking security man: white bushy hair, a big white mustache, and a girth that suggested he enjoyed his duck confit and lunchtime Bordeaux as much as his other fellow citizens of the Republic.

Okay, now she has a problem with the French? Then, what the fuck were you doing in fucking France? If you really are so afraid of everybody, why step out of your house at all? And, seriously, being an American, the capital country of obesity, you’re going to snark on the girth of a Frenchman? Also, just because he’s fat, does that make him incapable of being a proper security guard? He has to check people’s luggage for shampoo , not run a half-marathon! I’m beginning to think this lady might have a problem with people in general!

He listened to my husband, nodded, glanced over at the two men, then came over to speak to me. I stepped away from the children, who were all preoccupied with their electronic playthings. I reported everything I'd watched and he listened gravely -- I could not tell whether he thought he was dealing with a hysterical mother or not.

"Madame, I can assure you that no aspect of security has been overlooked on this flight."

"Why are you so certain."

He smiled slightly. "Because I am privy to security measures that I cannot discuss with you. French security is not so -- ahh -- let me say it is different from American security. Let me repeat: this is a very safe flight."

Over his shoulder I watched the two men join the boarding queue: they looked actively jumpy by this point.

Yes, jumpy! That is so suspicious. Because terrorists are known to attract attention to themselves while boarding a target. This woman is so smart, my brain hurts!

My husband and I discussed it between us. He was prepared to go ahead but equally okay to cancel out of the flight if I was that nervous; I felt a little embarrassed by my fears. Then I looked at the bent line of the heads of my children, fighting imaginary enemies on their toys. Was I going to trust their fates to the assurances of an airline security guard?

"If we stayed, we could get a room at one of the airport hotels, take the train in to Paris for dinner, and return here tomorrow morning," I proposed. "That wouldn't be so bad --"

"No."

"The alternative," I continued, "would be for you to have me digging my nails into your forearm for eight hours..."

We waited for our bags to be removed from the plane. The children were delighted at this turn of events. They had never seen Paris

Bigot McGee is right! It’s all about the children. That was her only concern. This wasn’t about her at all. She just didn’t want to see any of those evil looking, jeans wearing, Mecca praying “terrorisors” to harm her children. So what if her children grow up to be brown people hating bigots too? Isn’t that what’s American conservatism is all about? Passing on your own deep-seated fear of the “others” to your children, as inheritance?

But, hey, as Racist Barbie will tell you, just because she looks at brown people in a funny way, she ain’t no racist!

Three years after the shoe-bombing incident, I experienced my own episode of terrorist profiling (and maybe that's what we should call it: not "racial" profiling but "terrorist" profiling, because the two are completely different. The latter does not arise out of irrational prejudice).

Yes, it’s not “racial” profiling if you don’t call it that. Just like if you are for “family values” & “traditional marriage” doesn’t mean you hate gay people and want them to remain second class citizens. You just want to protect your children. And it’s not that you think women have a right to make choices about their own bodies, you just love believe in the sanctity of life. I mean if God didn’t want that baby to be born, he wouldn’t have let that frat boy date rape you! It’s that simple, people! God probably has a plan for you. It might include you spending your after-life in “eternal damnation”, but hey, a plan’s a plan!

Why is that so hard to understand?

However, let’s find out what ugly fate was wrought upon all those people who were stupid enough not to say something.

The flight we had rejected landed without incident.

So that means that you’re not going to do that again right? I mean, once bitten, twice shy, right? Right?

Now, nearly seven years later, and in the wake of the Juan Williams incident, I ask myself: Would I make that same decision again?

Without question. And I hope I would still have the guts to report a troubling passenger to an airline clerk without fear that I might be branded racist.

Basically, what she’s trying to say is: I was wrong. But I’d do it again, because of terrorism!

 

* Post headline written in the style of Huffington Post articles!

[via Gawker]

India wins seat on UN security council; takes over the world!

The Indian government has been hard at work trying to convince the rest of the world to start giving a fuck about our opinion. It would been simpler to get a twitter account or write a free article for the Huffington Post and bait everybody into listening, but I guess we don’t do simple things, due to our impending superpower status.

Speaking of superpower status, guess what? We finally got a seat on the UN Security council! YAY! We numba one, bitches! Suck on that, Pakistan!

Uh, what?

After A gap of 19 years, India will once again be at the UN high table — the Security Council — as a non-permanent member.

As many as 187 countries in the 192-member UN General Assembly voted for India, the largest support received by any country for a non-permanent seat in the past five years. India has been on the UNSC six times in the past.

Huh? It’s just a non-permanent seat? And we’ve already held it six times before? You mean to say we’re doing it again with our own sloppy seconds? That’s simply preposterous!

But, hey, so many countries voted for us. That should count for something, innit?

To be elected to the Council, candidate countries need a two-thirds majority of ballots of Member States that are present and voting in the 192-member Assembly. The seats are allocated on the basis of geographical groupings.

Colombia, India and South Africa ran unopposed and were elected to represent their respective regions, having received 186 votes, 187 votes and 182 votes, respectively, in the first round of balloting.

Ahem, so what? We won, that’s what counts right? Now we can set the agenda, make them talk about real issues, show them who’s boss, right? RIGHT?

Following their election, South Africa, India, Colombia, Germany and Portugal will become non-veto holding members of the Council in January with the mandate to impose sanctions, as well as deploy peacekeeping forces around the world.

That’s it? All we get to do is write strongly worded letters and referee stupid civil wars? We don’t even get a measly ten percent discount at the UN gift shop? This is so disappointing! It’s like attending a Broadway musical choreographed by straight people! Or being a fan of the Kolkata Knight Riders! Or winning an all-expenses-paid vacation to New Jersey!

This is so unfair. We so deserve to be on the security council. We invented the zero, bhangra music and Anil Kapoor.

Isn’t that reason enough for everyone to ask us out and make us prom king?

 

Five new countries elected to two-year terms on UN Security Council [Joy Online]
187 of 192 backing it, India gets UNSC seat [Indian Express]
South Africans “Ecstatic” over Security Council Selection [VoA]

The India-Pak OMGLOLPalooza!

So I wrote this post when India and Pakistan had started bilateral talks last year, for the first time after so many months! Anyways, this got lost in the ‘drafts’ section, and since both countries are back to talking again (because as they say  538061844791849173583629172491312 time is the charm), this is relevant. So you could read it both ways, as something that happened in the past, or something that will happen in the future. Whatever works for ya, guvnor!

Note: Some dialog may have been changed to reflect recent developments. Also, watch out for the clichés.

***

After three false restarts, India and Pakistan are ready to finally start the dialogue-to-plan-start-of-dialogue. Yes, welcome to Season 4 of So you think you can hold a bilateral dialogue? Even though PM Singh has had a few bilateral meetings with both President Zardari and PM Geelani, everyone's pretending that didn't happen, and this is the first time they're meeting, after thousands of years of sending rude superpokes to each other through facebook.

And since there is no definite name for the summit/meeting/whatevs, we have helpfully named it OMGLOLPalooza, because, why not?

So the stage was set for Nirupama 'I got a fancy new hairdo just for this' Rao, who was representing the Indian government, and Salman 'Made in China' Bashir, who was representing the civilian government of Pakistan, the Pakistani army, Bilawal Bhutto, Pervez Mussharaf's bad-ass moustache, Jeebus, let's just keep it as a TBD.

Anyways, with the rest of the world watching (Not really. The Europeans are busy trying to save their economies while getting their ass kicked in football, the Americans are busy praying, sexting and blaming Obama for their hernia. the people in the continent of Africa are alternatively starving and killing each other, the South Koreans are occupied with playing video games, the Japanese spend their time having sex with female robots, the Australians are planning to spend the summer punching and kicking anyone they can get their hands on, meanwhile Israel and Iran are scheduled to spend the rest of the year trying to cockblock each other. Also, the whole world has seen this movie before and knows how it ends.) both these nuclear 'powers' on the brink of 'war' to finally set aside their differences and finish negotiating the divorce settlement they started negotiating more than six decades ago!

So here is the conversation that happened during their super-secret meeting:

SB: Hi . . .
NR: Oh hai, I can haz Hafiz Sayed?
SB: LOL! No! Strategic Asset FTW!
NR: Sadface
SB: I can haz Cashmere?
NR: R U Crazy?
NR: Can't even handle territory you actually have! Amirite?
SB: True dat! LMAO!
SB: But I can haz Cashmere?
NR: *facepalm*
SB: Is that a yes?
NR: No, no, a thousand times no! From our cold dead hands! Also!
NR: Which reminds me, stop trying to kill us all the time!
SB: Non-state actors, we can't control them, trolls etc. You know the drill . . .
NR: Yeah, pretty much.
NR: Okay, so here are some new dossiers. New evidence against old & new people.
SB: Ummmmm, yeah, sure, we're going to "read" this and take it "seriously".  *snigger*
NR: Umm, yeah. I'm sure about that!
SB: So can we talk about Cashmere, then?
NR: On two conditions. . .
SB: Which are . . . ?
NR: First, stop pronouncing it as "Cashmere", it's a place, not a sweater. K-A-S-H-M-I-R.
NR: Second, are you fucking kidding me?
SB: Fair enough.
NR: Now that we've got that out of the way, what’s with spying through our embassy staff?
SB: Well, I can’t speak for the ISI, because I’m not even allowed near their offices and if they ever see me there they might shoot me . . . but they must be doing that just to piss off Arnab Goswami.
SB: If they wanted real intelligence about your country, they would just ask the Chinese to send it over, in PDF format!
NR: Well, the Chinese are efficient, to say the least.
SB: Yes, yes they are.
SB: Have you seen their phones? They can do anything! Anything! Even talk dirty to my wife, while I watch my favourite TV show, The Secret Adventures of Agent Rana! It’s the #1 show, in Pakistan.
NR: Dude, calm down! And really, that was way serious TMI!
SB: Well, I was promised that we could talk about anything we want . . .
NR: Anyways . . .
SB: Sorry to interrupt, but before I forget . . . . something something Indus Water Treaty
NR: Huh?
SB: Just needed to mention that too!
SB: Which completes my checklist.
SB: Now I can go on teevee and proclaim that all issues important to Pakistan were discussed.
NR: You’re a sneaky basted!
SB: Guilty as charged! LOL!
NR: *rolls eyes*
NR: Okay, now can we get back to talking about terrorism?
SB: Yeah, sure.
SB: We want you to stop terrorizing us . . .
NR: O RLY?
SB: . . . with Mahesh Bhatt movies!
NR: To tell you the truth, he is one of our secret weapons.The other one is Himesh Reshamiya.
NR: Collectively, they are known as the Weapons of Mass Irritation.
SB: I see your Himesh, and raise you an Atif Aslam.
NR: Oh, that’s a good move. A bloody good move.
SB: Want to play a game of Poker?
SB: Whoever wins gets Cashmere!
NR: Jebus Hussien Christ! You’re an idiot!
SB: Well, you’re starting to sound like my wife!
SB: It makes me horny.
NR: I can’t do this right now. I have a headache.
SB: That’s what she says! Hahahaha!
NR: …….
NR: ……..
NR: This meeting is over.
SB: See you again . . . . in a few months time?
NR: *Sigh*. Yeah, I guess.
SB: You bring the food, I’ll bring the wine. *Wink*
NR: *Mumbling to herself* The only thing I’ll be bringing is a frikin pepper spray.
NR: *Exits*

The way we live now: The Internet in 2010

With every new internet application that becomes popular (Twitter! Facebook! Chatroulette!), there are millions of pixels written about the said phenomena. Almost all the “good” reporters write articles or do teevee news reports about how “<insert name of new web application>” is either ruining the internet and/or is a new revolutionary way to communicate with each other. (Except at Slate magazine of course, where I’m pretty sure that they’ve either written or are currently writing an article about how email is still the world’s most important “killer-app”).

Now, traditional journalists are not that fond of the internet as they claim to be. For them, the internet is sort of a bête noire. They may pretend to embrace it, but in most cases they simply come across as people devoid of any understanding of it whatsoever. Whenever they talk about the “new media” you can almost spot the froth coming out of their mouths. They can’t even know where to begin to understand the internet (to be fair, no one can. Maybe that is the beauty of the internet? OMG, we made an observation! And since it’s not on an old media platform, it probably doesn’t count!), but they bravely continue to talk about it. With embarrassing results.

The Internet in 2010: It knows everything. Just like that obnoxious kid in school.

Now here is the internet’s most common phenomena:

(a) Person A writes something and puts in on the internet.

(b) A large amount of people agree & disagree with Person A’s opinion

(c) Some snarky blogger links to Person A’s article/post and metaphorically tears it into pieces

(d) Person A writes post about how everyone who didn’t agree with them misunderstood them and/or the internet is full of mean and rude people.

The Internet in 2010: Just like your abusive ex-boyfriend. Nothing you do is ever going to be good enough.

Journalists' pride themselves in being the “first chroniclers” of history. However, nowadays, apparently, anybody with a computer and ability to type thinks “their opinion matters more than that of a journalist!” Silly idiots! How dare they think that? Thanks to the damn internet, the first chronicle of history will be by some stupid un-important person who doesn’t even have a teevee or dead-tree magazine gig and didn’t even go to some fancy journalism school.

Now, for a moment, imagine if you could read Cleopatra’s first person blog (Fuck like an Egyptian), how would you be able to figure out what she was saying? Would you have guessed that when she posted about her epic orgies with a Roman general named “Mark A”, she was referring to Roman general Mark Anthony? How would you be able to put two and two together, without the help of a journalist? How would you know that she was the first woman to ever get vajazzled?

And would Shakespeare have even bothered to write “Julius Caesar” if he found out that Caesar's death was caused by an harmless frat prank? Would there even be a “Caesar salad” if people thought that the man’s last words were “Don’t Ice me, bro”?

The Internet in 2010: Ruining history for future generations

The internet is a lot of things to lot of people. It even helps people create their own reality. Whether you want to still believe that the earth is flat, or that Paul is dead, there is an app for that. There is no universal truth anymore. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. And as it turns out, to their own facts. You don’t have to believe anything you don’t want to. And only on the internet can you have a second life, even if you don’t have a first one.

The Internet in 2010: Your own personal echo chamber

On the internet, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.

You may think that you’re smart, funny and insightful, but there is someone on the internet who is smarter, funnier and plenty more insightful than you will ever be. For every person who likes what you say, there are ten who think that you are full of crap.

The choice here is between speaking your mind or not saying anything at all.

If you think that anyone owes you respect because of whatever, well, just remember that on the internet no one gives a shit who you are.

To paraphrase some dude, The internet owes you nothing. It was here first.

The Internet in 2010: We’re all like a bunch of monkeys trapped in a cage. You can duck all you want, but one of these days you’re going to end up with shit on your face. The best you can do is to wipe it off and hope that no one figures out that the stench is coming from you.

Armageddon is almost here: Pakistanis in America pretending to be Indians!

According to this Reuters report, Pakistanis in America are pretending to be . . .  wait for it . . . . . wait some more . . .  . INDIANS!

"A lot of Pakistanis can't get jobs after 9/11 and now it's even worse," said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn's Pakistani American Merchant Association. "They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job."

This news has made everyone at TImes Now come in their pants. Jinnah is rolling in his grave, and has started hitting the bottle again. Gandhi is smiling, not because he heard this news, but because he made friends with Che Guevara in freedom fighter heaven and he’s high. Nehru just shrugged and is continuously eating Lady Mountbatten’s head by telling her that he knew this day would come. And Sardar Patel is still mad at Hari Singh because WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU SO LONG TO SIGN THE DAMN THING, HARI?

Anyways, this is big news in the subcontinent, because this is even bigger than Arsenal fans trying to pass for fans of Manchester United! (Or vice versa! Or do all the kids love Chelsea these days? Real Madrid? Delhi Daredevils? Facebook United? I DON’T REALLY KNOW THESE THINGS!) or Red Sox fans cheering for the Yankees!

This is so because India and Pakistan were roommates almost six decades ago and had a really bad separation. And everyone is still bitter about it, mostly because Pakistan took India’s Kenny Chesney CD collection. EVEN THOUGH INDIA BOUGHT ALL THE CDs. And now, India is in a polygamous relationship with America and a few European countries and Pakistan is in a monogamous relationship with China, which is unhealthy because China always insists on being on top.

Anyway, this nationality switcheroo seems a bit strange, because most racist Americans (i.e. Republicans/people from Arizona) don’t know an Indian from a Pakistani. For them there are only two types of brown people. One is all those people from Burritoville, who bring up their kids, mow their lawn and sleep with their wives. Everyone else is an Ay’rab [sic], who do their taxes, make funny smelling food and watch those musical movies.

However, on this blog we are nothing but fair (snigger!), so here are some helpful tips for all those people who want to pass as a person of Indian origin living overseas:

9. Find out who Rajan Zed is – If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn’t say “find out”, now would I? This is important not because you need to agree with him, but whenever someone asks you where you are from, you can always answer with “Did you hear what Rajan Zed said now? . . .  Can you believe that guy? Sheesh”. Also, this might even lead to guest blogging opportunities at Sepia Mutiny.

8. Watch and love every hindi movie ever made – Not only is it important to watch those movies, you HAVE to like them. Even the crappy ones. And it is your solemn national duty to defend them in front of people who don’t like them. Even if your argument doesn’t make any sense.

7. Join the Narendra Modi fan club – You need to spend at least two hours everyday trolling the interwebs for blogs/articles/tweets about “NaMo” or any of his other brethren and attack whoever dares to write about them, without even reading what the blog/article/tweet is all about. If you don’t know what to write, just throw in the following in your word salad: “The mainstream media sucks, Congress bias, something something Sonia Gandhi and/or Rahul Gandhi”. Check the comments on www.rediff.com for more inspiration.

6. Always act guilty around your parents – A sure sign of Indian upbringing is when you see a perfectly normal, confident person act like a bumbling idiot in front of his or her parents. No matter how successful you get, no matter how much money you have, your parents will always make you feel guilty. You can’t fight thousands of years of civilisation. (Which reminds me, Mom, Dad, if you are reading this, then please remember that I didn’t do anything. I WAS TRICKED INTO WRITING ALL OF THESE THINGS). 

5. Excel at science and/or medicine – Let’s face it. Most kids of NRI’s are ready to do their PhD’s before they celebrate their tenth birthday. As to why, refer to reason no. 6. Hey, don’t take my word for it.

4. Don’t marry your cousin – That is because then you’ll be mistaken for someone from Arkansas. And believe me, you’d rather be from the caves of Tora Bora than from Arkansas.

3. Whenever someone tells you that your English is really good, thank them and inform them that their English is heavily accented.

2. Don’t kill your wife -- No, seriously. Don’t.

And the #1 most important thing to keep in mind while trying to pass as Indian in America:

*cue drum roll*

1. Don’t blow shit up.

Bada Bing, Bada boom . . . G’night everyone!

Today in comical attempts at racism

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, racism can be funny! And instead of outrage, it invokes pity!

Here are a few examples:

First, everyone’s favourite American election issue, Outsourcing! (They hate it so much that they even made a terrible movie about it!)

 

There are so many things wrong with this video.

a) The background music is probably middle eastern. But really, India, Arabia, all brown people must listen to the same music, no?:

b) None of the background pictures are actually Bangalore. One of them is Connaught Place, New Delhi!

c) What’s with the accent?

To be fair, the “many, many” jobs guy is simply hilarious!  Hey, NRI’s, you should hire him at the next birthday/anniversary party to entertain the kids, so that the adults can talk about the desh, without getting disturbed.

Anyways, seriously, Arkansas?

Your state is famous for only two things, cousin-marriage and giving birth to Presidential candidates.

And out of the two Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton pretends he’s from New York because now that he doesn’t have to run for an election, he doesn’t want anyone to remember his hee-haw connections and as for Mike Huckabee, that’s just another hilariously stupid thing about Arkansas.

So if you rednecks want to compete with people from India, then, instead of blaming other people, get an education. Oh, sorry. Let me spell it out for you: ej-u-cay-shun. It means book-larnin’.

If you want your children to be competitive in the international market, maybe get them to read something other than the bible or Going Rogue? Or maybe you shouldn’t have sent your children to Jesus school, in lieu of college?

If you want jobs in Arkansas, then maybe it’s best not to teach your children that evolution is not true and global warming is fake? Because if you do, then they’re going to end up like you. Bitter, dumb and clinging on to their guns.

Who am I kidding? It’s obviously those damn foreigners, who take away jobs you are not qualified to do!

*****

Now, you may not know this, but seems like England is having elections! I know! I thought Susan Boyle became their Prime Minister for life last year? Or whatever. How do British elections even work?

Anyways, this post is not about that. It’s about idiotic racist emails!

Two Tory councilman have been suspended for sending out a racist joke via email, because the Tories are trying to convince everyone that they aren’t bigoted and racist anymore and welcome everyone to their party! As long as they are rich, white and straight!

So here is the joke:

A Somalian arrives in the UK as a new immigrant. 
He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr UK man for letting me into this country, giving me housing, money for food, free medical care, free education and no taxes!"

The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am an Afghani [sic]!"

The man goes on and encounters another passer by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in the UK!"
The person says, "I not from the UK, I am Iraqi!"

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand  and says, 'Thank you for the wonderful UK!'
That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Pakistan, I am not from the UK!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you British?"
She says, "No, I am from India!"  Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the British?"
The Indian lady checks her watch and says: "Probably all at work."

Haha, what jobs is she talking about? There are no jobs in England!

And those which exist, are all thanks to those damn foreigners!

Here are some suggestions on what the Indian lady at the end of the joke should say, to make it less racist and/or better:

a) All the British people are at the pub, drinking themselves silly!

b) All the British people are auditioning for Britain's Got Talent!

c) All the British people are working for my husband’s company!

d) All the British People? They’re all resting because they knawed on a terribly large piece of spotted dick and now all of them have food poisoning!

That’s not funny, it’s true.

If Nick Clegg is Obama 2.0, then Gordon Brown is definitely Joe Biden!

 
O Blimey! We are in serious shite now!

The British are still having elections!

Things got terribly exciting for the British journalists yesterday when Gordon Brown committed a ‘gaffe’.

He was talking to a sweet old lady (sweet by British standards. In Britain anybody who doesn’t get drunk and beat up their husbands or have bad teeth is referred to as ‘sweet’.) who asked him “All these eastern Europeans are coming in, where are they flocking from?”.

Instead of answering her by saying “East Europeans? They come from Africa, of course!” or telling her to shut her gob, the Prime Minister said some boilerplate about immigration and then asked her about her grandchildren.

Well, that was that.

Afterwards, while heading back to his car, the following happened:

But Mr Brown was still wearing a microphone provided by Sky News, which recorded him turning to his aide Justin Forsyth, and pronouncing: “That was a disaster.”

He added: “Whose idea was that?” He then blamed “Sue” – Sue Nye his longest serving aide and friend.

He was then asked by the aide what Mrs Duffy had said.

He replied: “Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.”

Basically he called his whole base (working middle class who are worried about “them immigrants stealing me job” ), bigots.

Although, when I first heard that Gordon Brown had called someone a bigoted lady, I thought he had run into David Cameroon. 

This is probably the first mildly interesting thing to happen to Gordon Brown.

Now, since anything that happens in this election has to be compared to the 2008 US Presidential elections, because that was the only election that happened on earth ever, the sweet racist lady is now Britain’s Joe the Plumber. Damn. I hate that guy!

Anyways, sweet racist lady, Mrs. Gillian Duffy, now has an agent. and stands to profit to the tune of £250,000.

That will buy her a lot of East European maids, won’t it?

Strangely, for the first time, all the brown people in Britain are going “Wait, someone said something racist and it wasn’t about one of us? That’s a bloody miracle!” In fact, the were missing racism so much they decided to go to the airport, just to be racially profiled, for old times sake.

While the rest of the world does something important, it's election season in England!

   From L to R: Peter Pan, Gandalf  the Grey and the Wizard of Oz

Everyone in England has got their knickers in a knot these days. No, not because some rogues in some far-off colony want their independence, like in the good old days, but because in three weeks they have to stop drinking for a bit and go to a bloody voting booth and caste their votes to elect one of those sorry arse politicians to the sodding parliament.

In three weeks, Britain might even have a shiny, new Prime Minister!

Now, they had a brilliant idea. To have a debate on teevee, with all the candidates, just like they do in America. Thankfully, they didn't take other ideas from American Democracy like having a two-year election for a four year term or choosing Vice-Presidential candidates through the reality show Project Running-mate.

The British debates were boring, compared to their American counterparts. Not one person winked or shouted "Drill, baby, drill" and apparently, they don't give a broken tooth about Joe the Plumber! And no one was offering a kilo of rice at 2 bucks a pop. 

Here are the top three contenders:

1. Gordon 'Big Ears' Brown

He is the current incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. This is the first election the Labour is fighting under his leadership. The last three were fought with Tony Blair at the helm. Unfortunately for him, neither is he as charming nor can he lie as well as Blair. Analysts predict that he is going to lose badly, because the economy is shite and after thirteen years of Labour, the people want a change (Yeah, you're gonna be hearing this word a LOT. Better get used to it). He has a huge man-crush on President Barack Obama and wants to bone him very badly, as all British PM's are constitutionally mandated to have unrequited feelings for their American counterparts.  If he loses the election, he'll probably retire into some remote British village with his wife & kids and open up a bed & breakfast, since due to his insanely boring personality, he really can't make that much money on the lecture circuit. 

2. David 'David' Cameroon

He is the front-runner for this election, and current leader of the opposition. It is his election to lose. And since he has been acting like he already won the election since last year, he is probably going to come up short. He is a 'compassionate conservative', which means a conservative who does not say racist things in public. If he were writing this blog post, he would have thanked you for reading it. He would have also reminded you that he loves all minorities, even those poor, gross Lesbians who live down the street. He understands how difficult this economic recession has been for everyone, as he has had to fire his fourth butler too, which has made things very difficult at Cameroon manor. Thank the lord for his own personal fortune, otherwise he would have had to live like an immigrant. Which would have been an absolute travesty! Unthinkable, innit?

 3. Nick 'The Kidd' Clegg

As the leader of the Liberal-Democrats, he is the 'wild-card' in this whole shebang. Due to Gordon being such a fuck up, and David being, well, David, experts are predicting that Clegg might be instrumental in deciding who forms the next government, because the election results might yield a hung parliament. Nick is famous for always spewing facts at anyone who cares (or for that matter anyone who doesn't care). He is sort of a wanker. That is why no one in England wants to go drinking with him, as constantly hearing about how mass-marketed alcohol beverages are causing malnutrition in Somalia is a real bugger. I mean, for fucks sake, all a bloke wants to do after a hard day's work is sit in a pub, make some jokes about how the fat chick flirting with the bartender looks like Wayne Rooney and watch some bleeding Rugger on the telly, so shut your pie hole and pass the crisps.    

Anyways, after yesterday's debate, everyone and their grandmother thinks that Nick Glegg is going to be the Prime Minister, because not only is he supremely confident & speaks 'truth to power', all the grannies and single mums in England want to take him home and do things to him which you absolutely do not mention in polite society. Also, since he talked about hope & change, he is being billed as the next Obama because after Nov 4, 2008 every election has to have it's OWN Obama, otherwise no one will care. Thanks, Barry, for ruining all elections, forever. 

Gordon Brown got some good reviews too because he managed to get in a few zingers and was also endorsed by Dr. Who (aka The Doctor. Because I don't want to get hate mail from those people.)  and the only working person in the whole of England, Harry Potter's mom.

These three got another two debates before they finally go to the polls after which everyone in Britain can go back doing whatever they do, like spreading sex diseases through the bookface and then stabbing each other to death.

Ah, Blighty. What would we do without you?

(No don't answer that. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question.)

Lastly, if anyone manages to 'steal' this election, just remember, I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY TWITTER DISPLAY PIC.

Right, ho!

 

[All pictures via Reuters]

Only Sarah Palin knows what it takes to win something

via Salon:

"We miss Ronald Reagan, who used to say, when he would look at our enemies, he would say: 'No. You lose. We win.' That's what we miss. And that is what we have to get back to."
                                                        
                                                                          -  Sarah Palin

Insane clown Barbie is right. To win anything, all you have to do is look at your opponent, tell them that you win, and viola, YOU HAVE WON!

Holy Magic beans, batman!

If only this woman had been manufactured when I was in school.

Or maybe I can do this retroactively?

Yes, I can!

So here goes:

Listen up, all you people I was in school with, I WON ALL THE COMEPETONS! EVEN THE SPELLLLING B!

Suck it, nerds!

Dear Indian media and south block diplomats, Barack Obama is not your boyfriend

So Manmohan Singh is back in Washington, because "The Barack Obama" invited him, to steal all of India's nukes and then distribute them equally between Pakistan and China, because he hates outsourcing?!

Anyways, it's that time of the year again, whenever there is some official level interaction between the Indian and American governments, everyone in the Indian media, print or teevee, has just has one question and one question only: WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE HYPHENATION? IS IT BACK? HAS IT GONE AWAY? IT'S BACK ISN'T IT? OR HAS IT GONE AWAY? WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME? WAIT, WHAT IS THIS NEW SHINY OBJECT YOU'RE HOLDING? TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE NEW, SHINY OBJECT. . . .

Everyone (the media and their "anonymous sources" in South Block) keeps talking about how the previous Bush administration was such a "good friend" to India. Don't you remember how we could call ol' Dubya anytime of the night, to complain about how after gym class whenever we were in the locker room changing back into our casuals, Pakistan used to pick a fight with us to distract us so that China could sneak behind our back and empty a whole tube of ben-gay into our fresh, clean underwear. And Dubya used to huff and puff and threaten to blow someone's house down!

And this Obama, he doesn't even poke us back on facebook! What a big 'ol meanie!

Despite the fact that by Dubya did more to upset the Indo-Pak defence "equilibrium", then any other American President before him, he's still missed by everyone, and is seen as a "good friend" to India. The reason that is set in stone is because of the Indo-US nuclear power deal. Even though that was signed not because our buddy had a soft-spot for India, but because it was good for American business interests. Which is why countries usually do business with other countries, because it benefits them in some way or the other!

Shocking! I know!

The truth is that, Bush gave all those little girls in the media and South block a lady boner because just like them he didn't worry about "global warming" or the "Geneva convention" or "International treaties" etc. He would bomb, whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted! He was their brave, white knight in faux cowboy boots, out there killing the bad guys! Even though most of the times the bad guys turn out to be innocent civilians!

And this new guy, Chocolate Gandhi, wants to talk about all those gay things like "nuclear disarmament" and "cutting carbon emissions" and wants to withdraw his army from Afghanistan and Iraq. Gee, what a homo! Whoever has ever even heard of "nuclear disarmament" in our country?

Of course, right now, India and the US have different goals, internationally.  Obama is not here to make friends. He's looking out for his own country's interest, and we should look out for ours. Which doesn't mean that both countries can't be "friendly" with each other and go out for a beer once in six months or  spoon each other every few years (NO HOMO). It's really hard for our media to comprehend the fact that two adults can be friends without actually agreeing on everything. What else do you expect? These are the same people who morphed Amitabh Bachchan's gig of becoming Gujarat's brand ambassador into WHY DID AMITABH BACHCHAN PERSONALLY KILL EVERYONE IN GUJARAT, IN 2002?

The fact of the matter is that even if Barack Obama forcefully lands in Pakistan, bitch slaps Zardari and then pees on Jinnah's grave, our news anchors will find some way to complain about how his actions prove his negativity towards India (I can already imagine Arnab Goswami asking G Parthasarthy "Does his peeing over Jinnah's grave mean that Obama is trying to melt the frozen dialogue with the Taliban?"). All these insinuations are usually for the viewers/readers benefit. Whenever someone from the Obama administration comes a-knockin, they gush over them like a creepy overage Justin Beiber fangirl!

Someone needs to remind them that this is international politics. It requires a little more nuance than what is required during the weekly meeting of the Lajpat Nagar Traders Association (Regd).

This is how we treat 'em

This is simply stomach-churning, mind boggling atrocious:

. . . at 2 am on April 7, hours before Chidambaram’s farewell to the dead and barely 18 hours after the CRPF combatants were gunned down, it is only the angry lowly officer, a sub-inspector, representing the State at this government hospital at Jagdalpur town, 150 km north of the site of the deadly Maoist attack. It must be said that he is here on his own and not detailed for the job.

No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector. “They were like my children,” he says.

Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain. “Our officers are home sleeping,” an attendant says.

Five hours later, just minutes before Chidambaram and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh visit the heroes, bureaucrats and the hospital’s administrators fuss in panic over the non-functioning air-conditioning. “Can’t it run for just 15 minutes?” asks one. Bottles of intravenous fluids now hang from their stands, their needles pushed into the arms of the wounded. These weren’t here six hours earlier. The linen has changed. The hovel is now spic and span. A couple hours later, Chidambaram chokes at a press conference, grieving the dead and expressing his resolve to wipe out the Maoists.

I know this is not a new thing for our country, but this is just sick. This is supposedly under our "best home minister" ever. And while those brave CPRF soldiers sacrifice away their lives, Mr Palipapan Chidambram gets to be the hero because he supposedly "resigned" from his ministry. You know what, "PC", if you really feel that you can't continue doing your job anymore, stay at home and let someone else do it. Otherwise, stfu and do what you were appointed to do and stop acting like a prissy teenage drama queen.

I always wonder what makes all those poor people join our armed forces. The pay is crap, they are most likely to die in combat because of some stupid bureaucrat or politician and if they happen to survive, no one is there to take care of their injuries. Most of them probably do it out of pure-patriotism, for a state which gives nary a thought about them.

Even reality show contestants have better working conditions.

Also, the phrase "Can't it run for 15 minutes?" encapsulates the philosophy of "governance" that is prevalent in India.

Yes, we're Incredible!

Incredibly insensitive, incredibly ignorant and incredibly idiotic.

If you don't stop eating that plate of scrumptious beef THIS INSTANT, Varun Gandhi will do unspeakable things to you

India's #1 idea person, Varun Gandhi, evil spawn of Sanjay "Imma cut your nads off" Gandhi and Maneka "Makes PETA look like pussies" Gandhi (gee, I wonder where Varun got his mean streak from?), is taking India into the 21st century by talking about issues relevant to people in this day and age:

Cow slaughter — topped Varun's agenda during his hour-and-half long address.
Urging Hindus to rise against the "heinous act which is a punishable offence and not only a social crime" the MP questioned the prevailing silence surrounding 'gau hatya'.
"Why hasn't a single case been registered so far for violation of anti-cow slaughter law," he asked.

Yes. Now that UP enjoys peace & prosperity due to there being a lack of actual real criminals (as they are busy trying to run the government!), why isn't the police pursuing more cow slaughterers? Besides stopping people from having sex, shouldn't this also be their other #1 priority? Which doesn't mean that they should forget their most important #1 priority, which is protecting Madam Maya's 'freedom' statues.

Varun also has another brilliant idea:

The Pilibhit MP asked his Hindu brethren to stand up for their "samman" (honour) and "swabhiman" (self-respect), and hoped to raise "an army of one lakh Varun Gandhi clones to fulfil his wish-list".

GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE! There are going to be Varun Gandhi's running around everywhere! Varun knows that he is one of the most awesomest human beings alive! So why not spread his awesomeness around? I'm pretty sure there is enough awesomenss to spare, for anyone who is interested! Isn't that simply awesome?

This is known as an 'Hands free' approach to governance! Since his cousin Rahul gets all the attention (due to the fact that he INVENTED politics and everybody anywhere is always 'pulling a Rahul Gandhi'), everything Varun does reeks of desperation. The poor guy is out in the wilderness and is continuously trying to draw attention to himself, as if trying to say "I'm a Gandhi, get me out of here!".

Tut, tut Varun. All you have to do to get noticed by the media is to get a twitter account, because if you don't have a twatter account or are not on "the bookface", you don't even exist anymore! Also, since the people on teevee have even lesser substantive things to talk about, they will put your twats on teevee everyday, because they are basically assholes.

In fact, through the magical powers of the hot tub time machine, one of our "reporters" from the "future" have sent in this "poem" which based on a very famous literary work, which speculates what life would be after a couple of decades under Prime Minister Varun Gandhi. It's never going to actually happen (because of education, which is a fundamental right now! Teehee, FUNDAMENTAL!), but let's just suppose it does, for shits & giggles:

When they came for the people who eat beef,
I said nothing because I prefer fried chicken.

When they came for the people who get their hair cut on a Tuesday,
I said nothing because I always have a standing appointment with my barber for every Friday evening.

When they came for people who drank alcohol on dry days,
I said nothing because those drunken bastards deserved it anyway!

When they came for the people who had sex outside of wedlock,
I said nothing because I was married and wasn't getting any sex so I didn't want anyone else to have it either!

When they came for all the gay people,
I said nothing because just like Chetan Bhagat, I am not "a gay".

When they came for all those women who wanted to be something other than a housewife,
I said nothing because they're women, what else are they going to do? 

When they came to give me a vasectomy so that I couldn't reproduce,
They left me alone because they realized I lost my testicles when I didn't say anything the first time they tried to curtail my freedom!

Some not-so-important points about the whole temple/mosque case thing . . .

So everyone has been blowing their horn about the whole Mosque/Temple case thing, because, really it's so important because . . . .

Wait!

YAWN!

I'm bored already!

I think we should take away the land from the crazies and build something which will piss of the high priests of all religions! [So it's either a gay bar or something to do with women's rights. Nothing pisses off the crazies more than a gay person or a women with no husband. Or WAIT! Let's combine the two and make it a Lesbian S & M bar. Maybe Lady Gaga will drop by to shoot a video or something! That will piss EVERYONE off! Also, TOURISM!]

However, since I ended up seeing one of the shouting sessions on the teevee cleverly masquerading as a debate, here are some thoughts:

1. How does the Congress party get to sit on a moral high chair? These are the same guys who nominated Sajjan "Imma going to run away from the law until I get anticipatory bail" Kumar multiple times and whose brother is currently the MP from the same seat Sajjan "Ironically Named" Kumar used to represent. So, seriously, Congress, STFU already!

2. I'm not a lawyer or something (Even though I have watched a lot of Boston Legal!) but shouldn't the witness at least be cross-examined before ANYONE is pronounced guilty?

3. This is not the worst 'thing' to happen to the country! There are worse-r things. Like droughts, famines and Vivek Oberoi movies!

4. The BJP person who shouts on teevee needs to stop frothing at the mouth (where else does one froth, anyway). Answering everything with "OMGOOGLES, MEDIA IS TEH SUCKZ, CONGRESS BIAS, LALALALALALALALLAALALA" makes you look even more mean and petty than you usually are! Also, "questioning the witness's character " is prudent legal strategy, but it is "prudent" only in the courtroom. If you do that outside, you're just a douchebag! Although, I'm pretty sure you have no problem with that!

An open letter to the Indian government to stop hating on Indian Culture

[Warning: Some links are probably NSFW. Also, if you really believe in the whole 'Indian culture' thing really seriously, some things, ummmmm, might not sit well with you. So I suggest you go to the nearest place of worship instead. Or haggle some random news anchor on twitter.]

Dear Indian Government,

Before you read any further, let me first ask you to hand this letter to an adult. No, not just anyone whose age is more than 18, but someone who can actually think like an adult. Possibly someone who doesn't giggle when they see human reproductive parts or cover their mouth with both hands when they say a 'bad word' like peepee.

I'm waiting.

Okay, fine. Since there is no one in your 'august organisation' who actually fits that description, I'd have to make do with whoever is actually reading this letter.

So, hey, what is up? (That is how we begin letters in 2010. None of the 'Dear ____' crap they taught you in school in the 1880s.)

I heard recently that you banned FTV. Again.

What is your beef exactly?

That they showed boobs?

Now, let me ask you for a minute, WHY ARE YOU AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE?

You see, before all the prudes invaded us and plundered us like they do to Paris Hilton, we were a country of non-prudes. In fact, all the best art-movie sex was being had in India, while those boring Europeans had only the 'missionary position' to work with. Although, to be fair, if you need to take off thousands of layers of clothes before you have sex, you're probably too tired to try anything but the missionary position anyway.

Look, we invented good sex in India. We're the land of the Kama Sutra (not the lame movie you also kind of banned. But the actual ancient text, which is much more famous than the Maharamamayana or whatever).

Did you know that when they accidentally invented the zero, they were actually trying to explain to people how a circle jerk works? I bet you didn't. That's what happens when you get celibate right-wing idiots to re-write your history.

Also, did you know that we have ancient caves in India which show actual ancient people having sex? Don't look now or you'll get a heart attack, but some of the ancient people even did it doggie style!

I know! It's a hard thing to digest.

You can stop crying now.

In ancient times, being a nymph was considered a good thing. They were worshipped, even! Now, people like you consider a girl who even talks to a boy a whore, and beat her/get her married to the nearest rich-old man!

And stuff they did in public back then would actually get you arrested nowdays! Or worse, get some dipshit jackass prudes who have nothing better to do except trying to stop people from having sex to file a PIL against you!

They didn't even need to have 'wardrobe malfunctions' during kama-sutric times. They believed that, if you have, not just flaunt it, but carve it on a fucking stone!

Also, most scientific and empirical evidence points to the fact that if kids take out their "pubertal frustration" (I'm using euphemisms, so as to speak your language, since you're scared shitless of saying the words 'sexual intercourse' or 'masturbate'.) during puberty, they don't turn into Shiny Ahuja. Do you really want to be responsible for a nation of Shiny Ahujas?

So, dear government, let the nice FTV ladyee show her wombachumbas.

Because, dude, she is doing more for public welfare than you ever will.

Therefore, on behalf of all the remaining adults in the country, and in the interest of public welfare and maid safety, I implore you to stop hating on Indian culture.

KThanksBai

Welcome to the offense economy

Are you one of them lazy fucks who wants to get famous but don't want to do the hard work like suck up to judges in a reality show? Do you want to be the self-appointed & self-righteous spokesperson for millions of other people who don't want you to speak on their behalf? Are you mentally unstable and have family and/or intimacy issues? Have you never spoken to someone outside your immediate family? Do you like Jackie Shroff movies?

Then do we have an offer for you!

Welcome to the offense economy, where everything is made up and the issues don't matter!

Just like everything else, to succeed in the offense economy, you need (a) A determination to succeed despite all the odds (b) Psychopathic tendencies (c) An ability to say the most vile things, without any remorse whatsoever.

If you got that, then we have the tools to help you achieve your goal!

Now, let's start with the basics. Here is an outline of how the offense economy works:

You do something stupid --> You get a large amount of time on teevee --> The people who own the teevee channels make money --> They keep talking about you --> You get undue influence    --> You keep doing more stupid things --> They keep talking about you --> They make more money --> You get more undue influence --> *∞

Confused? Need more explanation?

Let us break it down for you.

Now, understand and memorize (where applicable) all the steps involved in achieving our goal:

1. Choose something to be angry about. It could be anything. A book, a TV show, a movie, a group on Orkut, a few dozen people having fun in a bar, anything that gets your goat (or doesn't. You don't have to be actually offended, you just have to pretend that you are. Everyone else will play along).

2. Make sure it's a slow news day (which is almost everyday, except the days India has a cricket match or Shah Rukh Khan has a movie out. Don't even try to go against Shah Rukh Khan, because no one can ever beat him at famewhoring!).

3. After you've selected your target, gather a few dozen out of work people like you, and start protesting by breaking/burning stuff up. For eg: If it's a bookshop, attack the shop and tear some books. If it's a movie you don't like, attack the theatre. If it's a television show you are fake-outraged by, go attack their local office etc.

4. Before you attack your target, make sure that you alert a few news channels about the
"unorganised" expression of "outrage". This is the most important step. Don't worry about the news channels ignoring you. That will never happen, no matter how silly your protest.

5. After the footage of you and your fellow "protestors", has been canned, give out your phone number and go home and prepare the rant that you will be giving to the tv "news" shows later.

6. Make sure your rant is as vile and as threatening as possible. Pepper your speech with liberal (ha!) doses of "We will not let _____ hurt the sentiments of our _______ community" and "This _____ is against our _____ culture". That is very important, because once you say that, no government will touch you because any government in India literally shits bricks at the thought of protecting free speech. Yes, they are pussies in that department. They only pick on easy, elitist targets!

7. Millions of outraged Indians will protest your actions through twitter & facebook status messages. Hey, you might even trend on twitter (due to which many thousands of proud Indians will point out how instead of Justin Beiber, an Indian topic is trending ZOMG!). Someone might even write a blog post which while masquerading as satire, will basically be a rant having a huge undercurrent of cynicism! But you probably don't even know what these things are, so why bother learning about them?

Now, remember that each event you stage will get you about a week or two of coverage. Three if you're lucky.

The following is a timeline of the events:

Week 1

This week will consist of various one-on-one interviews. You can pick and choose your appearances. Make sure that you choose more hindi/local language channels because they would be more sympathetic to your cause. English channels should only be used when you want to scare people further. The hosts of these programs will help you immensely because they have perfected the art of feeding lines to their interview subject while simultaneously acting outraged. It's modern art, really. Remember, do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, try to sound reasonable. That will destroy your buzz before you can say Halla Bol!

Week 2

After week 1, your role is over. Week 2 will revolve around how free speech in India is dead, thanks to people like you. Do not appear on ANY panel discussion during this time. Instead, the news channels will schedule other people with extreme points of view to argue against/on your behalf. Sit back on your sofa, grab a box of popcorn and enjoy the ride. Throughout the week, prime time news will being focusing on you and your actions. Barkha Dutt will call a few guests and ask them the same question in different words, Arnab Goswami and Suhel Seth will spend the whole time interrupting each other, Rajdeep & Sagarika will continue to shout at the camera and whatishisname at Headlines Today will continue to look like someone permanently attached his eyebrows to the top of his forehead so that he could continue to have an always-on exasperated expression.

Week 3

If you've managed to keep yourself in the news for this long based on a single incident, then well done! You must have done something really, really vile! If you didn't, well, next time try harder? Now, since most of the mileage that they could gather from your story has been gathered, the coverage during week 3 will be in the form of we-the-people type weekend shows. Here, a panel discussion will take place along with an audience. Most of the same points that have been repeated for the past two weeks, will get a final airing. However, before the end of the show, an audience member will say something emotional & patriotic (like "Be an Indian first" etc.) which will be useless and bullshit-y, but will make everyone in the audience applaud like crazy. The anchor of the show will then close the show on a somber but surprisingly happy note. And then everyone will go back home, until they are called on to do the same thing again.

There. CONGRATULATIONS! You're now a bonafide famewhore. A celebrity.

Your name will live on in infamy.

At least until the next guy who does the same thing!